Steve Young, reporting on the story, says Intel believes that typical users will never notice the problem. Young goes on to say that, even so, more and more customers are upset at the way the situation is being handled. According to Intel, the problem was fixed as of about two months ago, which translates to about two million chips altogether that do include the flaw. Stephen Smith, the Pentium Engineering Manager from Intel, says that the magnitude of the error is comparable to the ratio between the distance of a few feet and the distance from the earth to the sun.
The reporter then says that despite this, many Pentium customers have lost confidence. Then there is a brief shot of Cleve Moler, Chief Scientist of The MathWorks, who says: "The concern I have is just the reliability of the results. I like to compare with a dead battery in a smoke detector at home: Chances are your smoke detector's never going to go off, but you sure want to know that it's working." Steve Young closes the report by saying that Intel is issuing no callback, and in the meantime the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California is discussing whether to continue relying on Pentium PCs. He concludes that although this episode may undermine Intel's efforts to position the chip as suitable for scientific workstations, the chip is being widely adopted in the much bigger consumer multimedia market where the bug is a non-issue.